Detecting shocked intergalactic gas with X-ray and radio observations

Understand

Detecting the thermal and non-thermal emission from the shocked cosmic gas surrounding large-scale structures represents a challenge for observations, as well as a unique window into the physics of the warm-hot intergalactic medium.

• In this work, we present synthetic radio and X-ray surveys of large cosmological simulations in order to assess the chances of jointly detecting the cosmic web in both frequency ranges.
• We then propose best observing strategies tailored for existing (LOFAR, MWA and XMM) or future instruments (SKA-LOW and SKA-MID, ATHENA and eROSITA).
• We find that the most promising targets are the extreme peripheries of galaxy clusters in an early merging stage, where the merger causes the fast compression of warm-hot gas onto the virial region.